Institutional Change and
Climate Change
in UNHCR and IOM
Nina Hall
DPhil (PhD) Candidate
International Relations
High Commissioner for Refugees and IOM Director General
UNFCCC Summit 2009, Copenhagen
Contribution and Aims
• Focus on the political dimension
• Empirical: no literature on these organisations’
responses
• Theoretical: how IGOs adapt to new issues
outside their mandate
Structure
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Research Questions
UNHCR and IOM mandates
Typology of Change
Research methods
UNHCR’s response to climate change
IOM’s response to climate change
Where to from here?
Research Questions
• Do IGOs evolve?
• How do they evolve and engage with
new issues outside their mandate?
• Why do they evolve?
UNHCR mandate
UNHCR established post WWII (1950) with a
narrow mandate
Legal authority for protection of European refugees.
“A well founded fear of persecution based for reasons of race,
religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or
political opinion, is outside his country of nationality and is
unable or owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the
protection of that country” (1951 Refugee Convention)
Not intended for natural disaster or ‘climate change’
displacement
IOM Mandate
IOM established with a broad mandate to facilitate
migration from Europe.
to make arrangements for the transport of migrants, for whom
existing facilities are inadequate, or who could not otherwise be
moved, from European countries having surplus populations to
countries overseas...’ (Constitution 1953)
Not intended for natural disaster or ‘climate change’
displacement.
Typology of Change
Change in rhetoric
Change in policy
Change in structure
Change in operations
Each given a score from 0 (no change) to 1 (complete
transformation).
Research Methodology
• Qualitative research
• Fieldwork conducted in Geneva, New York,
Copenhagen, Kenya, Oslo.
• 120 interviews with UN, donors, NGOs and
government
• Primary and secondary literature review
UNHCR: Rhetoric Change
•
2007 Executive Committee Speech
•
High Commissioner
for Refugees,
Antonio Guterres
climate change causing massive displacement
•
High Commissioner “strong belief that climate
change was new phenomena that must be dealt
with” (Personal Interview with UNHCR staff member)
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2009: Copenhagen
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“Climate Change is expected to unseat conflict as the
main driver of mass migration”
Need for a new convention
Score: 0.6
UNHCR: Policy Change
• 2008 First policy paper
- ‘climate refugee’ misleading term
- Climate change will lead to internal displacement
- Protection gaps for those displaced internationally
2008 IASC Working group
2011: Bellagio and Nansen
- Call for new ‘guiding framework’ for those displaced internationally
by fast-onset climate change
Score: 0.7
UNHCR: Structure Change
Little structural change
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•
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Few new positions created
Focal point passed around like ‘hot potato’
Now staff in protection and operations
Score 0.3
UNHCR
Headquarters,
Geneva
UNHCR: Operational
Change
•
HQ: No changes in operations.
“No concrete plans to operationalise climate change…in
our programmes or works in the field”
(Interview with UNHCR HQ staff member)
• Kenya: no protection gaps due to
‘climate change displacement’
(Interviews with UNHCR staff Kenya)
• Pacific anomaly?
Score: 0.0
UNHCR Camp registration
Kakuma, Kenya
IOM: Rhetoric Change
• 2008 Director General: ‘The International
Organization for Migration has an obvious role in
addressing the linkages between environmental
degradation, climate change and migration’.
• 2009 DG at Copenhagen: the international
IOM Director General,
William L. Swing
community should ‘accept the principal of people
who must migrate, temporary or permanently, in
order to adapt or to survive climate change’.
Score: 0.6
IOM: Policy Change
• 2007: Bangkok conference
• 2008: IASC working group
• 2009: Policy Paper on Migration,
Climate Change and the Environment.
Score: 0.7
IOM: Structure Change
• ‘Loose focal points’
• Research focus
Score: 0.4
IOM: Operations Change
• Projectised organisation
• Funding for more than 500 projects on
environmental migration.
• Compendium on Climate Change,
environment and migration
– Kenya relabeling of livelihood project to adaptation
Score: 0.7
Summary of Change
(2000 – 2011)
IGO
Rhetoric
Policy
Structure
Operations
Overall
Change
UNHCR
0.7
0.6
0.3
0.0
0.4
IOM
0.6
0.7
0.4
0.7
0.6
Where to from here?
Obstacles to change
Staff resistance
‘in a rush of enthusiasm to push the boundaries of
thinking about forced displacement, refugee concerns
can be too easily eclipsed by the popular topics of the
day – climate change displacement being one’
– Erika Feller, UNHCR Assistant High Commissioner
Protection, 2010
Member state resistance
- UNHCR Standing committee 2011 against expansion
Stepping back
Policy: What is the long-term vision?
Academic: Further research on politics
of climate change and migration